Monday, March 31, 2014

Resource: Mewar Ramayana Online

Thanks to the sponsorship of the Jamsetji Tata Trust, the World Collections Programme, and the Friends of the British Library, you can now read an eighteenth-century version of the Ramayana online. The so-called Mewar Ramayana was commissioned by Maharana Jagat Singh II (r. 1734 - 1754) of Udaipur. Pieces of the manuscript arrived in Europe via James Tod, while other pieces remained in India and circulated through private collections.The manuscript has now been reunified through a massive digitization project.The file is quite large and takes some time to load (it took more than twenty minutes to load and process it on my office computer). But it is so awesome. The British Library's "Turning the Pages" feature lets you flip the pages upward (rather than left-to-right, right-to-left), so you can experience it as it was meant to be read.

The digital manuscript is accompanied by with a pop-up box of English-language guidance. Click on the image below to see the manuscript.

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About This Blog

A compilation of research notes made while conducting research in London, France, and India for a Ph.D. dissertation in architectural history. Occasional updates and notes added as I come across interesting things while working on my book manuscript (working title: Astronomy in Motion).